With Softdocs, this time can be saved by utilizing an add-on feature for Doc e Scan called eComm Capture.

eComm Capture automatically captures emails and their attachments from one or multiple monitored mailboxes into the appropriate folder within Doc e Scan.

eComm Capture can capture the body of the email, attached files and key field information.

All of its functions can be configured to fit your business needs. If the body of the email isn’t important to you, you can choose to exclude it in the capture. You can also limit the number of attachments, their file size or file types.

You may also set up a notification email address where error notifications will go if there is conflicting data, ensuring accurate quality assurance.

Maximize your Doc e Scan solution by adding eComm Capture. Contact us for more information.

“Our filing was not what it needed to be,” said Debra J. Jacobs, County Clerk/CFO. “Manually filing not only takes time but there is a much larger room for human error. Nothing is more infuriating than not being able to find a file when you need it.”

Download their case study below and hear about their experiences with the implementation and deployment of Softdocs solutions.

Softdocs Case Study – Rabun County BOC

On February 18-22 Anna Boomer, Selia Straus and thousands of Texas school officials “Walked the Walk” at the annual TASBO conference—a fitting theme an event whose backdrop is the historic Riverwalk of San Antonio, Texas. As the newest Account Manager in the Softdocs family, Anna enjoyed meeting educators and leaders from the hundreds of school districts in Texas, particularly individuals representing districts that are currently utilizing Softdocs products!

There was a wonderful turnout at TASBO and the exhibit hall boasted basketball flooring, school buses, and live demos of a range of products. Suffice it to say, when Anna and Selia were not interacting with the conference attendees they could be found at different vendor booths in the hall, talking about the needs of K-12’s in the state.

All-in-all, this event was fun and educational and we look forward to hearing more about Anna’s upcoming trips to Texas.

While Anna and Selia were in the Alamo City, Lew Love was in Greensboro, North Carolina at the 2013 NCASBO annual conference. This year’s theme was “Believe and Achieve: Innovative Solutions for New Challenges.” With ever-present concerns from school districts about budgetary and workflow issues, attendees gathered to discuss the challenges they face as educators and identified solutions to help them meet their goals. At Softdocs, this is a discussion that does not end. In fact, continually developing software that addresses the complicated needs of educational institutions is at the forefront of our minds. So, it was with enthusiasm that Lew learned about the needs of the schools in his territory, knowing he could take these insights back to our Columbia headquarters so we can make our products that much better for our clients!

Last week, Andrew Daniel, Robert Satcher, Mike Murphy and Selia Straus were in Myrtle Beach for the annual SCASBO conference. Year after year, this is always a great conference that provides the opportunity to touch base with the many friends we’ve made in South Carolina over the years. Did you know that almost 2/3 of SC school districts are Softdocs customers?

There are more conferences on our calendar and we look forward to connecting with as many people as we can throughout our travels, but if you would like to touch base with us in the meantime don’t hesitate to drop us a line! Whether you want to talk to your Account Manager or a member of our Support staff, we encourage you to contact us!

Sound familiar? With the development of SoftApp, our applicant and position tracking solution, the entire hiring process is simplified. Instead of just creating an online job application, Softdocs has built a complete job hiring process. The position requisition form begins the process, providing workflow for the creation of the position. This triggers the automatic creation of an open position that applicants will apply for online. SoftApp also automates the process for requesting references. Once an applicant has submitted all their necessary documents, email requests are automatically sent to their listed references directing them to your institution’s website to fill out a recommendation questionnaire. All results are submitted immediately for review and become a part of the electronic review packet. The next step in this overall process is interviewing. SoftApp provides an interviewing e-form (that allows the user to workflow the results) and a recommendation-for-hire e-form to complete the interview process. Once you take into account the tremendous reporting capabilities and the onboarding forms, SoftApp provides a complete solution to an otherwise labor-intensive process.

Now, for Bulloch County Schools, applicants can complete their forms and submit necessary documents online, and HR can use SoftApp‘s reporting tools to review and compare multiple applicant portfolios at once. They are also working with the Softdocs Professional Services team to automatically file an applicant’s documents into a new employee folder within Doc e Scan once they are hired.

To find out more, click here or contact us today.

Name/Title
Sue Pittman, Application Support Specialist

From
I was born in Jamaica and relocated to the US as a teenager. I now live in Lexington, SC.

Career History
Before coming to Softdocs, I went back to school and worked in the legal field over the course of 2 years at Rogers, Townsend & Thomas and Fleming & Whitt. Prior to that, I worked in IT at CGI for 16 years, Computer Consulting Group for 6 months, and Real Time Systems for 3 1/2 years.

Hobbies/Interests
I enjoy interior decorating and playing the piano.

If you were a Softdocs solution, which one would you be and why?
If I was a Softdocs solution, I would be Doc e Fill because I like how it keeps paper off desks by allowing users to fill out forms and easily route them to the next user. No more paper cuts!

Name/Title

From
I grew up in Key West, Florida before moving to the big town of Yemassee, SC. Living only .5 miles from Smokin’ Joe Frazier’s plantation, I got to box with the champ and his son Marvis Frazier.

Career History
I worked for Palmetto Systems Integration in Windows/Unix administration and American Time Data doing Time & Attendance, Security Access before bringing my talents to Softdocs.

Hobbies/Interests
I love true tent camping in the rugged outdoors. Hiking down nature trails and boating down rivers. I once spent two days with my brother James going down the Salkehatchie River from Hampton, SC to River road in Beaufort County. I am looking forward this summer to a canoe trip down the Edisto river with my son, Jonathan and youngest brother Patrick, camping and fishing along the way.

If you were a Softdocs solution, which one would you be and why?
If I were a Softdocs solution it would have to be EMMA. Since I have been with Softdocs, I have been working with EMMA. I like that it’s simple on the outside, keeping punch-in/outs to the point, but also complex in its ability to manipulate the data collected by EMMA. Who knew that a simple spreadsheet would blossom into a robust time keeping system. And I love hearing the stories from our customers on how much EMMA is saving them in time and money.

Name/Title

From
I’m from Hopkins, SC, a little small town on the southeast side of Columbia.

Career History
Prior to Softdocs I worked at Twork Technology in Charlotte, NC  for two years providing solutions for public, private and governmental sectors.

Hobbies/Interests
I really enjoy the outdoors so I love outdoor activities like running, riding bikes, and fishing. I really enjoy traveling and trying new food.

If you were a Softdocs solution, which one would you be and why?
If I were a Softdocs solution I would be Doc e Scan because it improves the institution’s efficiency and accuracy.

From
I was born and raised right here in Columbia.

Career History
I’ve worked a handful of places, but most notably I worked around the corner at 3 Man Auto Service for six years before bringing my mechanical talents to the Pressure Sealer team here at Softdocs.

Hobbies/Interests
I am admittedly addicted to golf. It can probably be considered a problem rather than a hobby. I have a few other hobbies but golf and softball currently are the two that take up most of my down time. I’m also a huge fan of all things Gamecocks and love the Atlanta Braves!

If you were a Softdocs solution, which one would you be and why?
If I were a Softdocs solution I would be Doc e Serve, of course.

Name/Title

From
I was born in Westerville, OH and currently live in Greenville, SC.

Career History
Prior to Softdocs, I worked 11 years for CSI Technology Outfitters managing different groups within the financial management segment including technical services, software support, training and conversion and product development. Before that, I worked as a systems engineer for Westar Technologies.

Hobbies/Interests
I enjoy backpacking, hiking, boating, skiing, swimming and family.

If you were a Softdocs solution, which one would you be and why?
If I were a Softdocs solution I would be eDelivery. I don’t mind being in the background and getting a lot of things done.

Name/Title

From
San Antonio, Texas

Career History
I was a director of a non-profit for two years, focusing on educating children and instilling in them an entrepreneurial spirit. Before that, I worked at an events-based marketing company for several years, with a brief stint at an IT company in Denver in between.

Hobbies/Interests
I adore my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Cooper, and spend a lot of my time walking with him around Columbia, exploring the new city I call ‘home’!

If you were a Softdocs solution, which one would you be and why?
If I were a Softdocs solution I would probably be Doc e Fill because I am always trying to find ways to make things more efficient—whether it’s the fastest route to a restaurant or the best way to communicate with a client. Doc e Fill is about streamlining processes and that’s what I love about it.

After your institution decides which employees will be offered contracts for the upcoming year, our products can read this data and pre-populate an electronic contract with all the necessary information. The contract is then delivered directly to the employee or through the employee’s supervisor.

The employee receives notification of the contract via email. The employee then opens the contract, reviews it and accepts or rejects the contract by electronic signature. The contract is automatically sent back to the supervisor or HR department for final approval, and then converted into a PDF and archived within the employee’s electronic folder in Doc e Scan, our enterprise content management solution.

Anthony Wright of Columbia County BOE in Augusta, GA sums up this processes’s impact to his district well:

“There is no longer a concern about a contract not being delivered or received because there is an audit trail of where the contract is from the time it is issued by us, returned by the teacher and later sent to the employee’s virtual file. The rapid turnaround of contracts enables us to focus our recruiting efforts more quickly and to get a critical step ahead of the competition in the very competitive teacher marketplace.”

To find out more, contact your Account Representative, email us or call us today at 888.457.8879.

Located in Alabama, Albertville City Schools has six schools in their district and over 4300 enrolled students. Four years ago, they became interested in finding a solution that would add more efficiency to their Finance department and create user friendly business processes for their employees. The solution they found was Softdocs.

Now, they are utilizing the Softdocs Workflow Suite and our newest backup solution, Evive, and workflow is continuous with their professional development, leave, purchase orders and more.

Download their case study below and hear about their experiences with the implementation and deployment of Softdocs solutions. Albertville City Schools’ CFO and Softdocs newest customer advisory board member, Christy Mead, offers advice about training, shares a personal experience with disaster recovery and speaks about the Softdocs User Group Conference.

Softdocs Success Story – Albertville City Schools

Like one of our other Account Managers, Brian Hinson, Anna will be working remotely. While Brian works from his Georgia home (but more appropriately from his car and client sites), Anna will do the same when she moves to Florida this summer. She will be managing accounts from Texas to Florida—both virtually and in-person.

Meet her in person this year when she travels to San Antonio, TX for TASBO February 18 – 22 (Stop by booth 122), Philadelphia, PA for Ellucian Live April 7 – 10, Panama City, FL for FSFOA June 18 – 21, Dallas/Fort Worth, TX for SRDUG June 24 and 25, and Greenville, SC for Softdocs’ User Group Conference—Bridge 2013—September 22 – 25. Download our 2013 Calendar and see all of Softdocs’ events throughout the year.

1. Microsoft Terminal Service Client Access Licenses (CALs)
2. Softdocs Thin Scan Licenses
3. Softdocs Doc e Scan & Web View Concurrent User Licenses

While we won’t dive back into what each does at this time, you can read though Part I here.

Today we’re going to talk about determining how many of these licenses you need. All three of these licenses operate in what’s called a concurrent manner—meaning that a license is only in use when it’s really “in-use.” Translation: When a user logs into the application, a license is used. When they log out, that license is placed back in the license pool for another user.

The advantage of this licensing model is that unlike in the days of old, when you had to buy a license for every user and it could only be used by that user, you can now buy based on what you plan for in terms of peak usage.

So, what is “peak usage.” According to the Glossary of Software License and IT Asset Management Terms, peak usage is defined as “the highest level of concurrent access or device or user interoperation with a software or hardware product, asset or configuration item, at a point in time.”

In shorter words, it means the point in time where the most users are going to be in the system.

For many of our customers, the total number of users and peak differ significantly. In other cases, the number is right on.

A few examples …

We have a large higher education institution (~18,000 students) with 394 registered users in Doc e Scan. These users cross the boundaries of student services staff, finance staff, procurement staff, personnel staff, IT staff … the list goes on. All in all, it’s a lot of people! Here’s where it gets crazy—they only have 50 concurrent user licenses, and have not ever had a “license unavailable” error when a user attempts to login.

But then we have other higher education institutions where there are 50-60 users in the system and 50 concurrent user licenses—and most of the licenses stay fully utilized.

So it would appear these two statements might leave you more confused than when you came, and this is justifiably so. But here’s the kicker—the reason for this difference is all in the type of user in the system. In our larger example, many of those 394 were faculty advisors, support staff and other individuals that might login just 3 days a year. So for the other 362 (or 363) days, their username sits idle. And, since the licensing is concurrent, you don’t have to worry about carrying the cost of their license for those 362 days they aren’t using it!

In our smaller example, the college actually isn’t much smaller than in our larger example. There are about 15,000 students, and employee count isn’t very different. The difference is that in this example, the implementation is only within student service departments (versus throughout the enterprise). Adding to this, the users are all what we would deem as “power users”—meaning they use Doc e Scan all day, every day for just about every task they perform.

In short, they get into work, start Outlook, start Colleague (or Banner or Jenzabar or CAMS) and then they start up Doc e Scan!

So, now that I’ve provided a couple of examples, how should you use this information to determine how many users you need?

1. Take a headcount—and a job role count. How many employees will need access, and what are their job functions?
2. How will these users be using the product? Will they just be searching for and viewing documents, or will they be scanning and entering data? Will they be using the product all day—or just for a few minutes every now and then.

Once you’ve  got this figured out, you can move onto the next step—the math! While I’m starting to run out of room in this blog entry, I’ll quickly go over this.

Again, three license types:

1. Microsoft Terminal Service Client Access Licenses (CALs)We typically suggest one CAL for each concurrent user license of Doc e Scan, so this number is totally dependent upon #3 (see below).
2. Softdocs Thin Scan LicensesEach time a user logs into the Doc e Scan client with a scanner attached (and turned on) to their computer, a Thin Scan license is used. This enables that scanner to communicate with Doc e Scan. An important note is this is regardless of whether the user actually has rights to scan. It’s simply hardware-level communication. Of course, if the user doesn’t have permission to scan, they won’t be able to scan. But, the scanner and the server can have a nice background conversation!
3. Softdocs Doc e Scan & Web View Concurrent User LicensesUnlike our competitors, we only have a single concurrent user license type (and that single type is usually far less expensive up-front and over the maintenance term than our competitors as well). This keeps things simple, but does require a little thinking.

   Whenever a user logs into the client, a concurrent user license and a Terminal Services CAL (license type #1) is used. If a scanner is attached, a Thin Scan license (#2) is used as well. When they log out, all three licenses are freed up.

   Building on this, whenever a user logs into Web View, our browser-based document viewer, a concurrent user license is also used. However, since this solution is browser based, and doesn’t allow scanning, a Terminal Services CAL and Thin Scan license are not used.

   BUT, if the user is using the desktop client—and also the Web View viewer—they will use two concurrent user licenses. Why? Because they are making two separate connections to the Doc e Scan database.

   So when would this situation happen? The best example is for a power-user that’s constantly scanning and also looking for documents through Auto Launch, our integration point with ERP solutions (such as Ellucian’s Colleague & Banner, Three Rivers’ CAMS solution or ERP solutions from Jenzabar). In these cases, when a user clicks the “find documents” button, the search results are presented in a browser window within the Web View application—versus the desktop client used for scanning.

   There are a lot of technical reasons why this is the case, but, in short, it amounts to security and creating a clean, smooth flowing user experience.

So, as you can see, it all breaks down to user type and how they will use the system. Still have questions? Contact us and we’ll connect you with one of our technical consultants so they can perform an in-depth analysis and ensure you’re getting exactly what you need!

Introducing Evive, a managed, off-site backup solution from Softdocs.

Evive is different from traditional off-site backup solutions. The product is designed to meet the specific needs of Softdocs products, without you having to worry about a thing. Our data management team handles everything, from setup to daily monitoring to system restoration in the event of a crash or disaster. Our team understands the importance of the information you keep within our solutions, as well as the process and needs of large-scale data backup.

We even setup SQL maintenance plans and periodically review your databases for abnormalities and performance enhancement.

It just makes sense—let the skilled data managers at Softdocs help maintain the integrity of your Softdocs solutions!

For more information, please contact us.